


This Distance Only Makes Me

by whyyesitscar



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-24
Updated: 2013-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-26 18:19:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/653076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whyyesitscar/pseuds/whyyesitscar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>War makes little kids cry like adults and adults cry like little kids. It's been a year and she's finally coming home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Distance Only Makes Me

**Author's Note:**

> I know everyone and their mother does army fics, but this is what happens when I spend an hour watching soldier homecoming videos on YouTube. Canon up to 3x06, AU from there. Title taken from "Song for a Soldier" by Sara Bareilles.

Here’s what I know about feelings: they’re like a cancer sometimes. I paid attention when we talked about cancer because cancer is actually kind of cool, in that way that orcas are cool because they’re so completely terrifying. The thing about cancer is it’s just cells that grow too quickly. They start growing and your body doesn’t know how to stop it. And it can happen anywhere in your body because your entire body is made of cells. Cancer is just made up of things that are already in you.

It’s the same thing with feelings. You have just as many feelings as you have cells, I bet. Sometimes it feels like I have even more. And when you feel something so much, it just starts growing and spreading. Cancer is always there because it’s just made up of a lot of your cells, but there has to be a tipping point. There has to be a moment where those cells decide to come together and throw your whole life out of balance.

I’ve had a lot of tipping points in my life, I think.

(1. Santana.

 2. Senior year of high school.

 3. The army.

 4. Every day that came after the army.)

/

She went with Puck. It was Finn’s fault, I guess. The whole thing with the ad campaign really freaked her out and I still can’t look at his face without wanting it to get mauled by something with a lot of sharp teeth. Like, teeth that are poisonous.

I guess the good part was that we had a lot of time to talk about it, even if we didn’t do much talking at first.

(“I need to do this, Brittany.”

“You’re wrong.”

“It isn’t a bad idea. For me, I mean. I know it hurts, but—”

“You don’t, though. You don’t know at all.”)

I spent a lot of time being pushed away by Santana. I wasn’t really prepared for the away she might not come back from.

So, anyway, I didn’t talk to her for a really long time. Quinn told me I was being stubborn; Rachel did a lot of research that I didn’t listen to; even my mom yelled at me a couple of times. Like, really yelled at me. The kind of yelling that makes angry lions run away from baby zebras. Puck was the only one who didn’t try to convince me to listen. For those first couple of weeks, I really liked Puck.

It was Christmas that broke me. If there’s any time everyone needs feelings-chemotherapy, it’s at Christmas. And I knew I couldn’t stay mad at Santana forever because I wasn’t going to change her mind. She gets this face when she makes a decision. It isn’t always the same face—sometimes she’s smiling and sometimes she’s not—but I can always see the resolution underneath. It’s like something is bubbling right below her cheeks and it won’t calm down until I accept whatever she’s decided. She’s always been like that—not looking for my approval, but for my resolution. Maybe that’s why she was always confusing, because it took me a long time to understand why she needed me to give her something she already had heaps of.

(They were different resolutions, I realized. One of them she wore like a panther and the other stuck itself inside her, burying its ostrich-head in the depths of her heart.)

Her parents were spending as much time with her as they could but they let us have Christmas Eve.

I know I’ll have a lot of amazing moments in my life, but I think that will always be the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.

I gave her a giant vat of sunscreen as a joke, and I forget how long we both cried for. Her real gift was probably a nice sweater or some CDs or something. I don’t really know; I had to have my mom pick it out for me. There was a lot going on that Christmas.

Mostly what I remember are her words. She told me about the best and worst parts of her life and how they were all the same because they were all big and uncontrolled. _That’s what the army is for, Britt_ , she told me. _My life is going in a million directions right now and I need to learn discipline so I can find the one that leads me back to you._

I took her hands and told her I was right there, but I knew what she meant. Sometimes resolution is unwanted and heavy, but it fills you up just the same.

She gave me an envelope with a plane ticket in it. _So you know I’ll come back_ , she said.

When I get really sad, sometimes I just look at it for hours. It’s been stepped on and ripped in a few places, but it still says “Santana Lopez,” and that’s enough for me.

/

She left a week after high school graduation and said she’d see me in a year. Puck walked with her, holding her hand, and I wondered who he had waiting for him. I couldn’t really think of anyone, so I decided he had me.

I didn’t go to college for that entire year. I got a job in town and stayed with my parents. She was going to come back and I was going to be there when she did.

This time, my mom didn’t yell at me.

/

(You know what happens sometimes with chemotherapy and radiation?

Sometimes you still relapse.

A year is a long time to wait.)

/

She’ll be home any day now. I know that because it’s what she said the last time we Skyped. _Any day now, Britt_ , she said, just like every other Skype call we’ve had. I believed her this time because of the way she smiled. It was the kind of smile that defined smiles. Like, if someone had spent their whole life surrounded by angry people—if they had no concept of happiness at all—they’d still be able to look at Santana’s face and call it a smile. That’s the kind of happy you always believe.

She keeps teasing me that she’ll surprise me at work and I really hope she doesn’t because that makes everything a joke. Surprising someone at work, that means that their coworkers get to coo and cry at them, but coming home is so much more than that. Coming home is comfort and safety, and I’ve never felt as warm and safe as I do when Santana and I are alone together.

(She’ll want to surprise me with something big and romantic, I think because she’s trying to make up for all the times she was grumpy over the past few years. I hope, at least this once, that she listens to her instinct to go small. Big is great and perfect, but homecomings aren’t big. They’re small and monumental and devastating and breathless. Big can wait.)

But anyway, she’s not due back for another couple of days, so I’ll just keep waiting. I’ll keep shopping with Quinn and buying things that Santana would wear beautifully. I find outfits that are sophisticated because Santana will be different. She will walk with a different stride, a different resolution. She will be my Santana but I’ll have to learn about her all over again. Instead of dancing waltzes, maybe we’ll tango. Maybe one day I’ll put away my pointe shoes and she’ll teach me how to march to _Swan Lake_. The Santana that comes back to me will be more mature and put-together, so I keep buying smart pants and long dresses. Quinn rolls her eyes and tells me that after a year of strict dress codes, Santana will want to lounge around in nothing but sweats. I don’t tell her that I’ve got a whole drawer prepared of Santana’s comfiest clothes.

(Most of them are actually mine. I don’t tell her that either).

If nothing else, Santana is going to come home to the best-kept closet in the world.

/

Three days later, Quinn asks me to grab some coffee with her, and I just know. She’s playing it too cool, making sure I get in the car at just the right time and telling me I’m weird for asking why.

I’ve waited too long for her to fool me now.

“I know what you’re doing, Quinn,” I tell her, and her face falls immediately. Quinn is an excellent liar but she can’t pull off a prank to save her life. “Please just tell me where she is.”

“At least let me drive you,” Quinn pouts. “She’s got her cell back, you know.”

“How?”

She ducks her head as she starts the car. “I stole it from your room yesterday.”

I only punch her a little bit. My other hand is too busy finding the right speed dial.

She picks up on the second ring and I start to cry.

“I thought she’d last longer than this,” Santana says. She’s crying, too.

“Hi, sweetie,” I gasp. “Did you get home okay?”

“I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”

“Are you far away?” I have a sudden need to be out of this car. Like, right now. I have my right hand perched on the door and everything.

“Even if Quinn still drives like molasses, you should be here in five minutes.”

“Will you keep talking to me until then?”

Santana pauses for a long time. When she speaks again, her voice is like honey-covered sandpaper. “I can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing.”

“Okay,” I sniffle. “Well, I bought you some clothes while you were gone. Quinn might tell you that I went overboard but these are all totally clothes that you need. Like, you’re home and people will want to eat dinner with you, and what if they’re important people so I got you lots of pretty stuff. I mean, you’re always pretty, but now your clothes will match, which I think is really cool—”

“Baby?”

“Yeah?”

“Get out of the car.”

But I don’t.

I don’t because I can hear her in two places—she’s in the phone and right outside my door. I can get up and touch her if I want to, and I really do. Looking at Santana, it feels like my world is stopping and starting so many times I can’t tell what’s real anymore. She’s there and then she’s not there and if I open my door, maybe it will be at the wrong time. Maybe when I open it she’ll disappear. I won’t know what to do with myself if she does.

It’s all decided for me anyway with a resolute click of my door. One year in the army has turned Santana into a perfect gentleman. She steps back to let me out and there she is. My Santana, my beautiful girl, is standing right in front of me. Her hair is onyx under the sun and her cheeks are hot caramel. She smiles whipped cream teeth and fire lips and when I touch her, she smells like family.

She hasn’t grown but she is taller than I remembered. If I were a different sort of person I might be frightened by the steel in her eyes, but I’m her person, and I can see the sugar coating.

“Is Quinn videotaping this?” I mumble into Santana’s shoulder.

“Yes,” she laughs back.

“Okay. Do you mind if I show everyone how awesome you are at kissing?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

I’m kissing her before she even finishes her sentence, but my mind must fill in the blanks because I swear I can hear every word she’s ever said. I can feel them on her lips, the loves and yeses and thank you’s. I can taste them on her tongue—the sweetness of hello and the bitter tang of distance. She paints them into my mouth in reassuring sweeps of green and desperate nips of pink. When I’m with Santana, I am her muse. She writes me love poems with her wrists, molds me into sculptures with her thighs. With the slightest glance she finishes the symphony and brings the house down.

“I missed you, too,” she says when we break apart.

“You still smell like the airport,” I reply.

“It’s a long flight.”

“Will you tell me about it?”

“If you want me to.”

“Is it okay if I don’t?”

“Absolutely.”

“Where’s Puck?”

“He still has about a week left.”

“Oh. Santana?”

“Yeah, baby?”

I burst into tears. War makes little kids cry like adults and adults cry like little kids.

Santana pulls me tighter and slides a hand down my hair. “I know, honey,” she soothes. “I know.”

/

I think my favorite part about science is that it still doesn’t explain everything. Coma patients wake up after twenty years. People survive falls that should have killed them. Watches deflect bullets and mothers find strength they shouldn’t have when their children are in danger.

And sometimes, on sunny days in June, small, tan hands find shaking, white fingers, and brush all the malignant feelings right out of them.


End file.
